The international community failed to respond adequately to another severe humanitarian crisis. The concerned members of the United Nations found it hard to agree on the basic policy measures that need to be implemented and decided to take the soft measures approach…. again. On the other hand, the big players – the US and the EU wanted to promote their image of world policemen and renewed their economic sanctions on Burma. The academic and the political elites in the EU and the US debated the effectiveness of those types of measures during the last decade. Now, there is a silent consensus that the sanctions are adopted as “good wishes” type of measures, rather than actual means to alleviate the dreadful situation in Burma. What is worse, every freshman in college can tell you that economic sanctions, by definition, have profound adverse effects on the population of the country, the same population that they are designed to protect. As much as I tried to avoid engaging in political debates, I am really looking forward to open the discussion on the issue of the lack of adequate international response to the Burmese crisis.
I will attach a number of documents that provide background information.
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